


little cry of the abyss

by enmity



Category: Persona 2, Persona Series
Genre: Childhood, F/M, mentions of bullying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 06:59:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14539179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enmity/pseuds/enmity
Summary: The first time Lisa marched smartly up to Tatsuya with her fists gripping her skirt and proclaimed, aloud, that she was to become his bride, he flinched.





	little cry of the abyss

**Author's Note:**

> happy birthday lisa, decided 2 restrain myself this time unlike the last bc this also reminded me it's been 1 yr since i started playing p2... and back then a tatsulisa fanfic was something i wanted to write even before finishing the game XD

Lisa, at seven years old, was not stupid.

She knew this because even at that age she was already an impressive number of things, if she said so herself, and if she narrowed her eyes and tilted her head the slightest bit, so that the light caught her eyes in the right way that made looking at herself in the mirror a little bit more painful, she found it became hard to tell the difference between the things she knew intrinsically to be _her_ , and the things that people thought of her.

Sometimes she wouldn’t feel like trying, and the two might as well be one and the same. Lisa was an impressive number of things – only daughter to her parents, Pink Argus to the people that might as well have made up the whole world to her, an object of ridicule and scorn to all the rest – and although stupid was not one of them, she was a child still, and it didn’t take much to convince a little girl that she was weird because of the color of her hair or eyes.

It didn’t take very much at all. After all the proof was right there: the light flaxen of hair and her skin that reddened far too easily under the sun, the blue of her eyes that seemed to fail in communicating to her classmates the beauty of the sky and sea the way her mother had once told her, back when things had been simple enough that she hadn’t imagined a thoughtless statement of motherly praise could plant a resentment that would stay within her well into the years of adolescence.

Lisa wasn’t stupid, and the kids at school made their distaste perfectly clear plenty times over, and she knew, too, the many miniscule ways children could be cruel. The way no one sat next to her or the slight edging away of shoulders whenever she neared, the unreciprocated greetings and birthday invitations she didn’t get.

The first time she marched smartly up to Tatsuya with her fists gripping her skirt and proclaimed, aloud, that she was to become his bride, he flinched. Not quite but almost in the exact precise way a kid would react when they didn’t want you to join them playing house but didn’t quite know how to phrase it, and who was you to ask them anyway when you knew they never even liked you to begin with? You’re so silly, they would taunt, without words, laughing and already huddling away somewhere else, anywhere else. Anywhere she wasn’t.  

Did they really think she wouldn’t notice?   

Lisa took a step back. She couldn’t see Tatsuya’s face, and behind her own plastic pink mask the triumphant grin she’d worn in preparation for the confession faltered. In a hurry she tried to fix it back on, but it wasn’t as though there was a point. It wasn’t as if he could see it, and he wasn’t even looking at her, really, not anymore. He must’ve thought she couldn’t tell.

Big Sis was laughing, that fond pretty sound she usually reserved for whenever she let Eikichi sit out to scribble something with his crayon set, and Jun was laughing, too – sounding a bit amused, a bit like he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard – and Tatsuya stood there, turning still at her brazen words.

Lisa’s shoulders slackened, and she had to remember that they weren’t laughing out of malice, like she would’ve assumed with anyone else, or like they would be, if they were any other people. But who she was with now, weren’t like most people. That was why she liked them. They were her friends, she remembered.

But the way Tatsuya had so instinctively flinched away from her at the first instant he heard her words stayed with her for the rest of the day.

And although Lisa wasn’t stupid, she was a child still, and a girl with a crush at that – and she was the kind of girl who thought it wasn’t a silly thing to do, to hold on to the hope Tatsuya’s reticence was nothing some persistence and well-placed declarations of her love couldn’t fix. Her repertoire of storybooks and fairytales had taught her well.

It wasn’t a silly thing at all to hope one day they would be able to see each other, grown-up, without donning the pretensions of masks; that he’d see for himself the smile that eased across her face in private moments when she thought of herself wearing a white gown and sheer veil with him by her side.

Surely, she thought, if she could imagine someone brushing away the delicate fabric to reveal the pale skin and blue eyes beneath and tell her with clarity that she’s _enough_ – not weird, not special, not even beautiful, just enough, enough of a person and enough of a girl to be looked upon with acceptance instead of scorn and suspicion – then why couldn’t it be Tatsuya? She could dream, couldn’t she?

Lisa dreamed and yearned and hoped, and when she woke up it was with the resolve that she would tell him her feelings again and again, as many times at it took, pulling him along by the sleeve as they played a pretend family with her as mother and him as father, until the day Tatsuya would finally turn to face her and answer to them.  


End file.
